SESSION A @ 1040

 ‘Uncertainty’ as a Critical Engagement in Museums

In this presentation, we discuss the use of ‘uncertainty’ as a critical engagement strategy in museum visitor interactions. More specifically, we anchor our discussion in fieldwork conducted at the Scottish Crannog Centre (SCC), an archaeological, Iron Age museum located in Kenmore, Scotland.

The visitor experience at the SCC is built on face-to-face interactions with museum practitioners as visitors are guided through the site. During the tours, visitors are encouraged to reflect on and discuss critical questions about how the Iron Age can be understood within the present context, as well as how that past can inform how we navigate and imagine the future. Notably, these critical discussions are underpinned by the museum practitioners’ acknowledgement of how uncertainty shrouds the knowledge of life in Kenmore 2500 years ago. Indeed, in employing Iron Age artefacts as focal points for engaged discussion, the practitioners provide visitors an experience that navigates a careful balance between fact, interpretation and imagination: things that we can know for sure, what is likely to have been and, inevitably, that which we do not know.

In the context of archaeological museum work, the complexity of navigating visitors through these known facts and interpretive uncertainties requires considerable care and skill, particularly with the language that is used when discussing the artefacts with visitors. In the presentation, we present illustrative examples of what dealing with uncertainty looked like in practice at the SCC. We also reflect on how the acknowledgement of uncertainty during tours can challenge otherwise potential practitioner-visitor knowledge hierarchies; making visitors more inclined to join in the conversation, question what they are hearing and draw their own conclusions and connections, rather than solely listen to the information they are provided with.

Overall, we emphasise how the acknowledgement, even encouragement, of uncertainty can be used as a productive strategy for generating critical engagement amongst visitors, as well as how it can function as a method to create a sense of connection to the distant past. In so doing, we suggest that uncertainty must not solely be acknowledged, considered and reckoned with, but also that it can be practically useful when asking questions about how pre-historic, the present-day and potential future lives are connected.

Speakers Bio

Linnea Wallen, Queen Margaret University, Lecturer and PhD Researcher in Sociology

Linnea Wallen is a Lecturer and PhD Candidate in Sociology at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. Her research focuses on how memory is understood, conceptualised, and engaged with in museum community engagement work in Scotland. John R Docherty-Hughes is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Public Sociology. He has two decades of experience in community-based and focussed Sociology education and, more recently, was the lead practitioner on a Scottish Government visitor engagement project which brought together the worlds of museums, mental health advocacy and Public Sociology.